Ham Hill

Quantock Orienteers Forest League 2, 13 December 2015

QO events have a well-deserved reputation for being tough, whether it be the massive slopes of the Quantocks or the evil jungles of the Blackdowns. Ham Hill is equally tough in a different way. It's a huge Iron Age hillfort which has been extensively quarried for hamstone, and is now a warren of ridges, hollows and old spoil-heaps with widespread patches of brambles and dense vegetation. For a navigator, it's a micro-technical labyrinth where the challenge is to maintain unbroken map-to-ground contact, knowing a lapse of concentration is likely to cause a horrible tangle of relocation problems.

Sunday's event was the best/worst I can recall. The Green course was 4.1km with 110m climb and 26 controls, many close to each other on the map but tortuously apart on the ground. The scale was 1:5000 with 2.5m contours, essential in this terrain. It was originally drawn by Bill Vigar with later revisions by Pete Akers & other QO members. It seemed very up to date with small paths and vegetation accurately depicted, so well done QO.

Andy Rimes had planned some devious courses. Green was a baptism of fire from the Start. I'd barely moved when I realised the optimum route to control 1 was back past assembly. The first three controls were a shock awakening, a taste of things to come! They weren't hidden; they weren't 'bingo' controls; they just made highly effective use of the amazingly complex landforms.

Just once on a longer leg in the north did I let my aching brain relax a little. That was costly. There's nothing like navigating happily to an impenetrable wall of brambles. I learned the lesson and concentrated rigorously thereafter. At the Finish it was good to feel physically quite exhilarated... but mentally I was exhausted!

It's well worth taking part in QO events for the satisfaction of actually completing some very testing runs/walks/staggers/crawls. This was one of their best. Brilliant - thank you!

Mike Kite

Part of the Green course